Monday, August 3, 2015

Week 102: Local color

After the big emotional high of last week, it was nice to have a fairly normal week at home as a family. Or, at least, as normal a week as one can have with a mama on maternity leave and two under two in the house. Lime continues to focus on eating, sleeping, and growing. It is truly amazing to watch how fast a "normal" baby puts on weight, and how effortlessly. Well, effortlessly for the baby, anyhow.

The only minor drama we had with Lime was more classic Wisconsin--somewhere between the form that Papa Bear carefully filled out and the issuing of the insurance card that we received in the mail, Lime's last name got changed to something that sort of vaguely rhymes with Papa Bear's and contains several of the same letters, but is in no way the same. Of course, both the HR department at Papa Bear's office and the insurance company insist that there is no way that they were responsible for the error. I'm inclined to believe that, even with a newborn in the house, Papa Bear is capable of spelling his own last name correctly, so I sort of doubt that he introduced the error. In any case, he was patient enough to send multiple emails and make the requisite half-dozen phone calls to get everything straightened out again. Who knows, by this time next year someone may have figured out how to bill the insurance company for Lime's first few pediatrician's visits. I won't hold my breath.

Lemon continues to make excellent progress in terms of getting used to sharing "his" people with Lime.

Lemon is also continuing to have a great summer, with lots of local adventures like harvesting vegetables from our garden, trips to the playground, and his very favorite, observing the trucks that come through our neighborhood.

By far the cultural highlight of this week was our outing to the National Mustard Day festival in the neighboring town of Middleton, home of the National Mustard Museum. Lemon especially enjoyed the live music and a frozen dessert called "Mustard Custard" provided by the local restaurant chain Culver's. Yes, it is exactly what it sounds like--frozen custard, flavored with mustard, and served with a topping of crushed pretzels. It is as weird as it sounds but not half bad if you come at it with an open mind.

We're anticipating an exciting week this coming week because, a mere 10 or so weeks after we initiated the process, we finally got approved for Lemon to receive his vest, which will replace the chest PT that we've been doing manually since Lemon was just a few months old. I am definitely looking forward to the vest's arrival, since there have already been many times where I've had my hands full with doing PT on a squirmy almost-two-year-old when I hear Lime start to squawk in the next room. A company rep is coming to our house on Thursday to train us on how to use it, and to do a therapy session with Lemon. Hopefully he'll be amenable--he tends to roll with almost everything so I am optimistic, but this will be a huge change for him. We'll see!